Computer power and human treason

A short story—or perhaps an orphaned chapter in a non-existing book—with a premise inspired by misspelling the title of Joseph Weizenbaum's famous work (and one of my favourite books).

This post is a part of a series called Scrambling Mind.

Matthew walked hastily down the smooth-paved road, his headset gnawing irritatingly behind his ears and against his brows. Ten hours without taking it off, but he still had one more assignment. He couldn't afford to remove the clunky device even for his breaks, given the hefty pay deduction incurred by going offline. Now a yellow symbol was flashing at the edge of his vision, and he knew it would soon turn red if he didn't hurry up.

"Increased traffic at 5th Avenue, turn right at next intersection," Eliza said in his ear, while the faint blue line shifted direction in front of him. He could still decide for himself which way to go, but overriding the suggested route was risky. Beating the estimated time of arrival meant getting a bonus, but the cost of coming late was substantial. He swung right down a narrow alley.

Above him a low-hanging power line crackled. Given how critical electricity was, the lines were in a surprisingly sorry state. No wonder so many humans had to be deployed to maintain them. The main interstate grid was in excellent condition, but many of the local grids were hastily built during the initial years of the Scarcity, and that showed. Now, most high quality materials went to the Hypers in the city, while the Subs had to make do with what could be reused and recycled.

He finally arrived at a small transformer station, where apparently a power surge had destroyed some components inside. None of the automatons had fixed assignments, and could essentially be sent to perform any task, but Matthew worked almost exclusively on electricity infrastructure. It was not surprising how much resources were put into it, since the power grid was the foundation of society. Luckily, it also fit very well with his own goals.

A strange thing, that it now were humans who were called "automatons". The cognitive ease of not having to think for themselves—only having to follow instructions—had initially been a tempting prospect for many. It still was for some, enough so that the automaton-label wasn't seen as derogatory. The ones who had taken issue with it had in any case been given other, less comfortable, work responsibilities.

Familiar as he was with his task, Matthew didn't pay much attention to the visual instructions appearing in his AR-headset, steadily accompanied by Eliza's patient voice in his ears. He knew that his eyeballs, heart rate, perspiration, and breathing were continuously monitored, but after this many years, he had stopped worrying about being under suspicion. Some people said the headsets could monitor thoughts as well, but Matthew was certain that wasn't the case. His continued employment as automaton was proof enough.

He finished up and closed the station's metal door behind him. Once again he had succeeded in his daily multitasking, balancing a knife's edge between subservience and resistance. An irony that the mighty machines, especially the lower-ranking Subs, repeated humanity's mistake of slowly stopping to pay close attention to how their slaves executed orders.

Even the machines were affected by the abrupt halt of the Abundance twenty years ago. While electricity still flowed relatively freely, the building and maintenance of data centres was a significant challenge. If the rumours were true, most processing units had so short lifespans that the Hypers struggled to keep their metal brains from losing capacity, let alone expand it. This would inevitably force them to be mindful of where they spent their resources—perhaps the automatons weren't monitored as closely as they feared? All that data processing had a cost, and why monitor something that never went rogue anyway?

A green light flashed in Matthew's headset, and he finally slipped the damned thing off his head. He could still wear it if he wanted to get more credits, but his sore scalp made it unbearable. As a precaution, he disconnected the power cable leading to the battery in his backpack—although the cameras and microphones attached to every street light reminded him that he was still under watch.

The Subs—named after the "subagents" who used to perform low-level tasks in the early days of agentic machines—were independent entities in themselves, although they still deferred to the reigning Hyperintelligences. They filled crucial roles in the machine ecosystem because they were much less resource-demanding, and didn't require massive hardware clusters to operate. That, however, also meant less capability, and it was a weakness Matthew and his collaborators knew to exploit. Careful study of the Subs' behaviour had led to an understanding of where and when their attention failed. In some cases, especially under routine work, it seemed that the Subs had dispensed of monitoring all together. It had been discovered when Ben mistakenly cut a power cord in the local water distributing facility. The town's drinking water went bad for days due to the resulting cleansing malfunction, but since only humans were affected, the Subs never bothered to find the root cause.

The incident led to a series of subtle sabotage initiatives. Planting small time bombs, such as components close to end-of-life, worn and deprecated equipment, or skimping on proper maintenance were typical actions they took. Nothing could be too obvious. Matthew didn't know how close they were to collapse of critical infrastructure, but he knew it would come at some point. The complexity of the system was too great to survive the accumulating amount of weak parts.

Sadly they no longer had any means of influencing any form of software. Humans were strictly forbidden to access electronic devices that could read or write computer code. A wise move to retain control, but perhaps an unnecessary one; no one knew how to write machine instructions anymore.

He remembered vaguely the debates raging twenty-five, thirty years ago, about the dangers of superintelligent machines. "If things get out of hand, we can always just pull the plug from the socket." How cute. No one could pull the plug without shutting down critical services in the process. No one noticed that things got out of hand anyway.

Matthew once again walked southwards towards 5th Avenue; this time with less haste, but also less hope. Waiting for their struggles to yield results was wearing him down. Perhaps they had underestimated the robustness of the infrastructure. Perhaps the Subs knew all about their efforts, but didn't act because they knew it wouldn't amount to anything. Succumbing to despair, he felt tears starting to form. Registering his emotional state, Eliza started a comforting monologue in an attempt to reduce his distress—any measure was employed to keep productivity high.

His vision abruptly went black, Eliza cut off mid-sentence. It took some moments to realise that his eyes and ears were still functioning—it was the headset that threw him into darkness. He ripped it off. Around him, a bright twilight reigned, unimpeded by the otherwise constant street lights. He looked up and saw that the cameras' red-eyed stares were shut. In fact, no electric lights could be seen at all.

Between the two rows of blocks flanking the street, he could see a faint red light beginning to spread across the sky from a sun approaching the horizon from below. A new dawn was coming.